A MESSALINA OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
There have been bad women in all ages, from Messalina, who waded
recklessly through blood to the gratification of her passions, to that
Royal mountebank, Queen Christina of Sweden, whose laughter rang out
while her lover Monaldeschi was being foully done to death at her
bidding by Count Sentinelli, his successor in her affections; and in
this baleful company the notorious Lady Shrewsbury won for herself a
dishonourable place by a lust for cruelty as great as that of Christina
or Messalina, and by a Judas-like treachery which even they, who at
least flaunted their crimes openly, would have blushed to practise.
No woman could have had smaller excuse for straying from the path of
virtue, much less for making foul crimes the minister to her lust than
Anna Maria, Countess of Shrewsbury. The descendant of a long line of
honourable Brudenells, daughter of an Earl of Cardigan, there was
nothing in the history of her family to account for the taint in her
blood. She had been dowered with beauty and charms which made conquest
easy, inevitable; and she was honourably wedded to a noble husband, the
eleventh Earl of Shrewsbury, who, although a man of no great character
or attainments, was an indulgent and faithful husband. Nor does she,
until she had reached the haven of married life, appear to have shown
any trace of the wickedness that must have been slumbering in her.
And yet, before she had worn her Countess's coronet a year, she had made
herself notorious, even in Charles II.'s abandoned Court, for passions
which would ruthlessly crush any obstacle in the way of their
indulgence. Lover after lover, high-placed and base-born indifferently,
succeeded one another in her fickle favour, as Catherine the Great's
favourites trod one on the heels of the other, each in turn to be flung
contemptuously aside to make room for a more favoured rival.
Even Gramont, seasoned man of the world and far removed from a saint as
he was, was frankly horrified at the carryings-on of this English
Messalina, compared with whom the most lax ladies of the English Court
were veritable prudes. "I would lay a wager," he says, "that if she had
a man killed for her every day she would only carry her head the higher.
I suppose she must have plenary indulgence for her conduct." The only
indulgence she had or needed was that of her own imperious will and her
elastic conscience.
As we glance down the list of her victims, we see some of the most
honourable names, and also some of the most despicable characters in
the England of the Restoration. The Duke of Ormond's heir caught her
capricious fancy for awhile; but, though his love for her drove him to
the verge of suicide, she wearied of him and trampled him under foot to
seek a fresh conquest.
To my Lord Arran succeeded Captain Thomas Howard, brother of the Earl of
Carlisle, a shy, proud young man of irreproachable character, whose love
for the fascinating Countess was as free from dishonour as a weakness
for another man's wife could be. She caught him securely in the net of
her charms, ensnared him with her _beauté de diable_, and then,
satisfied with her ignoble triumph, proceeded to make a fool of him.
Nothing pleased this Countess more than to bring her lovers together, to
watch with gloating eyes their rivalries, their jealousies, and their
quarrels, which frequently led to her crowning enjoyment--the shedding
of blood. And it was with this object that one day she induced Howard to
join her at a _petit souper_ at Spring Gardens, a favourite
pleasure-haunt of the day, near Charing Cross. The supper had scarcely
commenced when the _tête-à-tête_ was interrupted by the appearance of
none other than the "invincible Jermyn," one of the handsomest and most
notorious _roués_ of the day, a famous duellist, and one of my lady's
most ardent lovers.
Here was a prospect of amusement such as was dear to the heart of the
Countess, who, needless to say, had arranged the plot. Jermyn needed no
invitation to make a third at the feast of love. That was precisely
what he had come for; and although Howard played the host with admirable
dignity to the unwelcome intruder, Jermyn ignored his courtesy and
brought all his skill to bear on fanning the flames of his jealousy. He
flirted outrageously with the Countess, kept her in peals of laughter by
his sallies of wit and scarcely-veiled gibes at her companion, until
Howard was roused to such a pitch of silent fury that only the presence
of a lady restrained him from running the insolent intruder through with
his sword. Nothing would have delighted her ladyship more than such a
climax to the little play she was enjoying so much; but Howard, with
marvellous self-restraint, kept his temper within bounds and his sword
in its sheath.
Such an outrage, however, could not be passed over with impunity; and
before Jermyn had eaten his breakfast on the following morning, Howard's
friend and second, Colonel Dillon, was announced with a demand for
satisfaction--a demand which met with a prompt acquiescence from Jermyn,
who vowed he would "wipe the young puppy out." The duel took place in
the "Long Alley near St James's, called Pall Mall," and proved to be of
as sanguinary a nature as even the grossly-insulted Howard could have
desired.
On the 19th of August 1662, Pepys writes:--
"Mr Coventry did tell us of the duel between Mr Jermyn,
nephew to my Lord of St Alban's, and Colonel Giles
Rawlins, the latter of whom is killed, and the first
mortally wounded as it is thought. They fought against
Captain Thomas Howard, my Lord Carlisle's brother, and
another unknown; who, they say, had armour on that they
could not be hurt, so that one of their swords went up to
the hilt against it. They had horses ready and are fled.
But what is most strange, Howard sent one challenge
before, but they could not meet till yesterday at the old
Pall Mall at St James's; and he would not till the last
tell Jermyn what the quarrel was; nor do anybody know."
If no one else knew of the cause of the quarrel, certainly Jermyn did;
and never did man pay a more deserved penalty for dastardly behaviour.
Lady Shrewsbury's delight at thus ridding herself of two lovers, of both
of whom she seems to have grown weary, may be better imagined than
described. Although Jermyn was carried off the field of battle, to all
appearance a dead man, he survived until 1708 when he died, full of
years and wickedness, Baron Jermyn of Dover.
The Court, as Pepys records, was "much concerned in this fray"; but it
was long before Lady Shrewsbury's part in it came to light, to add to
the infamy which she had by that time heaped on herself. Her wayward
fancy next settled on a man of a different stamp to either Howard or
Jermyn. It seemed, indeed, to be her ambition to make her conquests as
varied as humanity itself. Her next victim was Harry Killigrew, one of
the most notorious profligates in London, a man of low birth and lower
tastes, a haunter of taverns, the terror of all decent women, and a
roystering swashbuckler, with a sword as ready to leap at a word as his
lips to snatch a kiss from a pretty mouth.
Such was my Lady Shrewsbury's successor to the aristocratic, high-minded
brother of Lord Carlisle. Killigrew's father was a well-known man of his
day, for he wore cap and bells at Charles's Court, and was privileged to
practise his clowning on King and courtier and maid-of-honour with no
heavier penalty than a box on the ears. The extreme licence he permitted
himself is proved by that joke at the expense of Louis XIV., which might
well have cost any other man his head. Louis, who always unbended to a
merry jester, was showing his pictures to Killigrew, when they came to a
painting of the Crucifixion, placed between portraits of the Pope and
the "Roi Soleil" himself. "Ah, Sire," said the Jester, as he struck an
attitude before the trio of canvases, "I knew that our Lord was
crucified between two thieves, but I never knew till now who they were."
Such was Tom Killigrew who kept Charles's Court alive by his pranks and
jests, and who is better remembered in our day as the man to whose
enterprise we owe Drury Lane Theatre and the Italian Opera; and it would
have been better for the world of his day if his son had been as decent
a man as himself. His fun, at least, was harmless, and his life, so far
as we know it, was reasonably clean. His son, however, was notorious as
the most foul-mouthed, evil-living man in London, whose very contact
was a pollution. Once Pepys, always eager for new experiences, was
inveigled into his company and that of the "jolly blades," who were his
boon companions; "but Lord!" the diarist says ingenuously, "their talk
did make my heart ache!"
That my Lady Shrewsbury should stoop to such a _liaison_ astonished even
those who knew how widely she cast her net, and how indiscriminating her
passion was in its quest for novelty. That such a man should boast of
his conquest over the beautiful Countess was inevitable. He published it
in every low tavern in London, gloating in his cups over "his lady's
most secret charms, concerning which more than half the Court knew quite
as much as he knew himself."
Among those to whom Killigrew thus boasted was the dissolute second Duke
of Buckingham, whose curiosity was so stimulated by what he heard that
he entered the lists himself, and quickly succeeded in ousting Killigrew
from his place in my lady's favour. To the tavern-sot thus succeeded the
most splendid noble in England, a man who, in his record of gallantry,
was no mean rival to the Countess herself. To be thus displaced by the
man to whom he had boasted his conquest was a bitter blow to the
libertine's vanity; to be cut dead by Lady Shrewsbury, who had no longer
any use for him, roused him to a frenzy of rage in which he assailed her
with the bitterest invectives; "painted a frightful picture of her
conduct, and turned all her charms, which he had previously extolled,
into defects." The Duke's warnings were powerless to stop his
vindictive tongue; even a severe thrashing, which resulted in Killigrew
begging abjectly for his life from his successful rival, failed to teach
him prudence. His slanders grew more and more venomous until they
brought on him a punishment which nearly cost him his life.
But before Killigrew's tongue was thus silenced, the wooing of the Duke
and the Countess was marred by a tragedy, to which our history happily
furnishes no parallel. The Countess's husband had hitherto looked on
with seeming indifference, while lover after lover succeeded each other
in his wife's favour. But even the Earl's long forbearance had its
limits; and these were reached when he saw the insolent coxcomb,
Buckingham, a man whom he had always detested, usurp his place. He
screwed up his laggard manhood to the pitch of challenging the Duke to a
duel, which took place one January morning in 1667, and of which Pepys
tells the following story:
"Much discourse of the duel yesterday between the Duke of Buckingham,
Holmes and one Jenkins, on one side, and my Lord Shrewsbury, Sir John
Talbot and one Bernard Howard, on the other side; and all about my Lady
Shrewsbury, who is at this time, and hath for a great while, been a
mistress to the Duke of Buckingham. And so her husband challenged him,
and they met yesterday in a close near Barne-Elmes, and there fought;
and my Lord Shrewsbury is run through the body, from the right breast
through the shoulder; and Sir John Talbot all along up one of his
armes; and Jenkins killed upon the place, and the rest all, in a little
measure, wounded. This will make the world think that the King hath good
Councillors about him, when the Duke of Buckingham, the greatest man
about him, is a fellow of no more sobriety than to fight about a
mistress."
It is said that the Countess, in the guise of a page, accompanied her
lover to the scene of this bloodthirsty duel; held his horse as, with
sparkling eyes, she saw her husband receive his death-blow; and, when
the foul deed was done, flung her arms around the assassin's neck in a
transport of gratitude and affection. Never surely since Judas sent his
Master to his death with a kiss has the world witnessed such an infamous
betrayal.
From the scene of this tragedy the Duke escorted the Countess-page to
his own home, where he installed her as his avowed mistress in the eyes
of the world, at the same time ordering the carriage which was to take
his outraged wife back to her father's house. Even in such an abandoned
and profligate Court as that of Charles II., the news of this dastardly
crime and Lady Shrewsbury's callous treachery was received with
execration, while a thrill of horror and fierce indignation ran through
the whole of England. But the Countess and her paramour smiled at the
storm they had brought on their heads, and with brazen insolence
flaunted their amour in the face of the world.
Now that the Countess's husband had been removed from their path the
shameless pair had time to attend to Killigrew, whose malicious tongue
must be silenced once for all. They hired bravos to track his footsteps,
and at a convenient moment to remove him from their path. The
opportunity came one day when it was learnt that Killigrew, who seemed
to know that his life was in danger and for a long time had evaded his
enemies successfully, intended to travel from town to his house at
Turnham Green late at night. His chaise was followed at a discreet
distance by my Lady Shrewsbury, who arrived on the scene just in time to
witness the prepared tragedy which was to crown her revenge. Killigrew,
who was sleeping in his chaise, awoke, to quote a contemporary account,
"by the thrust of a sword which pierced his neck and came
out at the shoulder. Before he could cry out he was flung
from the chaise, and stabbed in three other places by the
Countess's assassins, while the lady herself looked on
from her own coach and six, and cried out to the
murderers, 'Kill the villain!' Nor did she drive off till
he was thought dead."
The man whose murder she thus witnessed and encouraged was not, however,
Killigrew, as in the darkness she imagined, but his servant. Killigrew
himself, although severely wounded, was more fortunate in escaping with
his life. But the lesson he had received was so severe that for the rest
of his days he gave the Countess and her lover the widest of berths, and
retired into the obscurity in which alone he could feel safe from such
a revengeful virago. This second crime, like its predecessor, went
unpunished, so powerful was Buckingham, and so deep in the King's
favour; and he and the Countess were left in the undisturbed enjoyment
of their lust and their triumphs.
"Gallant and gay, in Clieveden's proud alcove,
The bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love,"
the infamous pair defied the world, and crowned their ignominy by
standing together at the altar, where the Duke's chaplain made them one,
almost before the body of the Countess's husband (who had survived his
duel two months) was cold, and while the Duchess of Buckingham was, of
course, still alive. The Countess was not long before her brazen
effrontery carried her back to Court, where she took the lead in the
revels and at the gaming-tables, and made love to the "Merrie Monarch"
himself. Evelyn tells us that, during a visit to Newmarket, he
"found the jolly blades racing, dancing, feasting and
revelling, more resembling a luxurious and abandoned rout
than a Christian country. The Duke of Buckingham was in
mighty favour, and had with him that impudent woman, the
Countess of Shrewsbury, and his band of fiddlers."
It was only with the downfall of the Stuarts that this shameless
alliance came to an end, when Buckingham's reign of power was over, and
he was haled before the House of Lords to answer for his crimes. He and
the partner of his guilt were ordered to separate; and for this purpose
to enter into security to the King in the sum of £10,000 apiece. Thus
ignominiously closed one of the most infamous intrigues in history.
Buckingham, buffeted by fortune, rapidly fell, as the world knows, from
his pinnacle of power to the lowest depths of poverty, to end his days,
friendless and destitute, in a Yorkshire inn.
"No wit, to flatter, left of all his store!
No fool to laugh at, which he valued more.
There reft of health, of fortune, friends,
And fame, this lord of useless thousands ends."
To my Lady Shrewsbury, as to her paramour, the condemnation of the Lords
marked the setting of her sun of splendour. The slumbering rage of
England against her long career of iniquity awoke to fresh life in this
hour of her humiliation, and she was glad to escape from its fury to the
haven of a convent in France, where she spent some time in mock
penitence.
But the Countess was, by no means, resigned to end her days in the odour
of a tardy and insincere piety. As soon as the sky had cleared a little
across the Channel, she returned to England, and tried to repair her
shattered fame by giving her hand to a son of Sir Thomas Bridges, of
Keynsham, in Somerset, who was so enslaved by her charms that he was
proud to lead the tarnished beauty to the altar. And with this mockery
of wedding bells "Messalina's" history practically ended as far as the
world, outside the Somersetshire village, where the remainder of her
life was mostly spent, was concerned. The fires of her passion had now
died out, and the restless and still ambitious woman exchanged love for
political intrigue. She became the most ardent of Jacobites, and plotted
as unscrupulously for the restoration of the Stuarts, as in earlier
years she had planned the capture and ruin of her lovers.
Not content with treading the shady and dangerous path of intrigue
herself, she set to work to undermine the loyalty of her only son, the
young Earl of Shrewsbury, one of the most trusted ministers and friends
of the Orange King; and such was her influence over the high-principled,
if weak Earl that she infected him with her own treachery, until the
man, whom William III. had called "the soul of honour," stood branded to
the world as a spy, leagued with the King's enemies, and was compelled
to leave England for ten years of exile and disgrace.
This corruption and ruin of her own son was the crowning infamy of one
of the worst women who ever enlisted their beauty, of their own free
will, in the service of the devil.